KING COTTON ON THE NILE Southern farmers do. In the first place, the land has to be ploughed with camels or buffaloes and prepared for the planting. It must be divided into basins, each walled around so that it will hold water, and inside each basin little canals are so arranged that the water will run in and out through every row. The whole field is cut up into these beds, ranging in size from twenty-four to seventyfive feet square.

The cotton plants are from fourteen to twenty inches apart and set in rows thirty-five inches from each other.

It takes a little more than a bushel of seed to the acre. The seeds are soaked in water before planting, any which rise to the surface being thrown away. The planting is done by men and boys at a cost of something like a dollar an acre. The seeds soon sprout and the plants appear in ten or twelve days. They are thinned by hand and water is let in upon them, the farmers taking care not to give them too much. The plants are frequently hoed and have water every week or so, almost to the time of picking. The planting is usually done in the month of March, and, as I have said, the first picking begins along in September.

I have been told that cotton, as it is grown here, exhausts the soil and that the people injure the staple and reduce the yield by overcropping. It was formerly planted on the same ground only every third year, the ground being used in the interval for other crops or allowed to lie fallow. At present some of the cotton fields are worked every year and others two years out of three. On most of the farms cotton is planted every other year, whereas the authorities say that in order to have a good yield not more than forty per cent, of a man's farm should be kept to this crop from year to year. Just as in our Southern 19